Thurii

Thurii, or Thueium, was a city of Magna Graecia on the Gulf of Tarentum, near the site of the older Sybaris. It owed its origin to an attempt made in 452 BC by Sybarite exiles and their descendants to repeople their old home.

The new settlement was crushed by Croton, but the Athenians lent aid to the fugitives and in 443 BC Pericles sent out to Thurii a mixed body of colonists from various parts of Greece, among whom were Herodotus and the orator Lysias[?].

The pretensions of the Sybarite colonists led to dissensions and ultimately to their expulsion; peace was made with Croton, and also, after a period of war, with Tarentum, and Thurii rose rapidly in power and drew settlers from all parts of Greece, especially from Peloponnesus, so that the tie to Athens was not always acknowledged. The oracle of Delphi determined that the city had no founder but Apollo, and in the Athenian Expedition[?] in Sicily Thurii was at first neutral, though it finally helped the Athenians.

Thurii had a democratic constitution and good laws, and, though we hear little of its history till in 390 BC it received a severe defeat from the rising power of the Lucanians[?]. Many beautiful coins testify to the wealth and splendour of its days of prosperity.

In the 4th century BC it continued to decline, and at length called in the help of the Romans against the Lucanians, and then in 282 BC against Tarentum. Thenceforward its position was dependent, and in the Second Punic War, after several vicissitudes, it was depopulated and plundered by Hannibal in 204 BC.

In 194 BC a Roman colony was founded, with Latin rights, known for a time as Copiae, but afterwards by the old name of Thurii. It continued to be a place of some importance, the situation being favourable and the region fertile, and does not seem to have been wholly abandoned till the Middle Ages. The site of the original Greek city is not accurately known, though that of the Roman town, which probably though not certainly occupied the same site, is fixed by insignificant ruins as being 4 miles to the east of Terranova di Sibari, and as occupying an area some 4 miles in circuit.

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.